What's at stake.

The citizens and public opinion are not foolish. What's at stake is the subject of a public opinion poll. What's at stake for 12 political parties.

Don't be fooled by the forces drawing the parties apart.

The big picture is how the American political parties have changed over time. "THE TRUMPPRECEDENT PARTIES: THE FUTURE OF POLITICAL INTHREE MOVEMENTS" was written by Bruce E. CAIN.

Lobbying before and after Congress is a big part of public interest groups.

MoneyLeadershipMembership: Size and IntensityInformation and Communication The Citizens and Interest Groups Voting, campaigning, and elections are at stake.

How America decides whether to vote in the presidential election is a big question.

Let's discuss what's at stake. What's at stake is covered in Al Gore's speech on December 13, 2000.

Don't be deceived by who owns the media.

How does media ownership affect the news we get?

The class was a revelation. The final paper assignment was an eye opener and the teacher was terrific. The questions sparked the imagination, the writing of an essay about the limits and possibilities of American democracy, and a lifetime love affair with politics. We want to share the excitement of discovering humankind's capacity to find innovative solutions to those problems that arise from our efforts to live together on a planet too small, with resources too scarce, and with saintliness in too short a supply. We honor the human capacity to manage our lives with peace and dignity in this book. The American political system and the founders' contribution to the possibilities of human governance are celebrated.

We have been teaching American politics for over 50 years. We have used a lot of books.

We wanted our students to have the best and most complete treatment of the American political system we could find, presented in a way that would catch their imagination, be easy to understand, and engage them in the system about which they were learning.

The book is the result of that desire. The book is intended to guide students through a wealth of material and to help them make sense of the content both academically and personally. To help students organize the details and connect them to larger ideas and concepts of American politics, and to help them find personal meaning in the American political system, we have an evaluative theme that runs throughout every chapter. The themes give students a framework on which to hang the complexity of American politics.

Politics is a struggle over limited power and resources, as gripping as a sporting event in its final minutes, but much more vital, is the analytic theme we chose. The rules guiding that struggle influence who will win and who will lose, so that often the struggles with the most at stake are over the rule making itself. What is atStake? The periodic analytic summary helps solidify the conceptual work of the book and gives students a sturdy framework within which to organize the facts and other empirical information we want them to learn.

To keep a republic, citizens must shoulder their responsibilities. The price of maintaining liberty can be seen as democratic participation among the diverse population.

The opportunity for students to pause and review their goals is provided by summaries.

There are three dimensions to our citizenship theme.

The profiles model republic-keeping behavior for students, helping them to see what is expected of them as members of a democratic polity, based on personal interviews with these people. A primary goal of introductory politics is to create good scholars and good citizens.

The ability to think critically about and process new information and the ability to be actively engaged in one's subject are the same skills that make good citizens.

The book's themes are illustrated through two unique features that will enhance students' visual literacy and critical thinking skills. These visual features are the result of a partnership with award-winning designer, educator, and artist Mike Wirth, who has lent his expert hand in information design and data visualization to craft these unique, informative, and memorable graphics.

Chapter summary material and margins help to support the book's major themes and to reinforce the major concepts and details of American politics.

The book follows the path of most American politics texts, with chapters on all the subjects that instructors scramble to cover in a short amount of time. In keeping with our goal of making the material more accessible to our students, we have made some changes to the format.

This chapter is important because of our emphasis on citizens. It covers the history and legal status of citizens and immigrants in America and the ideas and beliefs that unite us as Americans as well as the ideas that divide us politically.

The Constitution's essential elements are federalism, the three branches, separation of powers and checks and balances. We look at the rules the founders provided, look at the alternatives they might have chosen, and ask what difference the rules make to who wins and who loses in America. The chapter is comparative. We look at a country that does things differently when considering rule changes. Understanding the rules is important to understanding how the system works. We look at alternatives to our system of government in other countries and among the fifty states in the text.

Because of the prominence we give to rules, this book covers Congress, the presidency, the bureaucracy, and the courts before looking at public opinion, parties, interest groups, voting, and the media. It is not counterintuitive to students who have an easier time grasping the notion that the rules make a difference when they are presented with those rules in the first half of the class. The chapters were written so that they would fit into any framework.

We believe that teaching is a two-way street, and we welcome comments, criticisms, or just a pleasant chat about politics or pedagogy. You can send us an email at barbour@indiana.edu or wright1@indiana.edu.

There are strange days in American politics. We have tried to deal with that strangeness bluntly. We don't know if that moment becomes the new normal or a historical blip. We take it as it comes and write about it in real time. We are political scientists, not magicians, and have a hard bias towards the scientific. Distinguishing between truth and fiction is important to what we do. Projections and predictions are possible, but our crystal ball has been hazy recently, and we don't know the future.

Economic displacement, demographic change and a widening gap between those with college educations and those without caused the divisions that have been building for decades. The challenge of writing a textbook for both of the Americas has been difficult at times. I think we have ruffled a few feathers by explaining the nature of our ideological divisions as objectively as possible. No one likes to be described as a statistic or a faceless member of a demographic group, or have opinions attributed to them that they may not even know they have. This book can inspire debate, disagreement, and discovery.

There are other characteristics of American politics that have been a challenge to deal with in this edition. We have a president who loves the spotlight and loves breaking the rules of American politics, but who also hates him, so it's hard to be indifferent. Many Americans would like to see the system turned upside down. We have had to be more careful about explaining the roles they play in supporting the Constitution so that we can fully understand the consequences as we decide.

We say in the book that if we have a bias, it is toward diversity. We can't write well for our students if they don't see themselves in the pages. We deplore the movement to return to an America where women, people of color, immigrants, members of the LGBTQ community, and other minority groups are marginalized because this book has to belong to them. In the last two years, some Americans have been able to make degrading comments about members of all those groups. We don't accept that view.

The ninth edition gave us an opportunity to modify the book's theme to reflect the influences of modern technology on power and citizenship, in particular the ways that citizenship is mediated by third parties. We looked at how controlling the political narrative has translated into political power with the advent of new and social media. Don't be foolish.

Some key changes that we hope will make the text even more useful to you and your students were helped by reviews for this edition.

To provide a more focused reading experience, we have streamlined the main narrative and its features.

What's at stake.

Good resources are important in the teaching of American government. Our goal is to create resources that support and enhance the text.

The content is available on demand. We are grateful to Graphic World and the California State University for developing the digital resources on this site.

Every student's journey to retaining and applying course content is different. Clear, consistent, and constructive course goals are needed to navigate this journey. Ensuring student success is dependent on the ability to track and measure individual progress.

Each title is crafted with specific course outcomes in mind, and adapted from renowned syllabus from across the country.

Getting the grade students want is dependent on knowing the objectives for each chapter and how they are tied to the goals of the course.

Instructors can track and measure individual progress in order to give students better feedback.

Being able to track student progress allows you to more easily identify areas of improvement, increases course efficacy, and allows you to report out on success.

Retention and course mastery can be improved through targeted and individualized instruction.

When assessing student progress against standard course outcome benchmarks, formative and summative assessment is more effective.

The foundations of American government include its history, critical concepts, and important documents.

The main institutions of American government are EXPLAIN.

The coursepacks and online resources are free with this text. Call your sales representative for a demo.

We couldn't have done it without a community of family, friends, colleagues, students, reviewers, and editors who supported us, nagged us, and kept us on our toes. This is a better book because of their help and support, but it would not have been a book without them.

We thank our families and friends at home.

The Political Science Department at Indiana University has given us help on details beyond our comprehension. The IU colleagues from other schools and departments have been great. The Freshman Learning Project people, as well as many IU folks, have made an immense contribution by raising to new levels our consciousness about teaching. The librarians in the Government Publications section of the library have done yeoman service for us.

We are thankful to colleagues from other institutions.

Rich and Robert were helpful.

Special thanks to our students who inspired us to write this book. Many students helped us as research assistants. These former students, who are now colleagues at other universities, helped enormously on previous editions. The electronic version of the book was created thanks to Jon Winburn, Laura Bucci, and others. Hugh Aprile, Liz Bevers, Christopher McCollough, Rachel Shelton, Jim Trilling, and Kevin Willhite helped with the earliest editions of the book.

Thanks to Mike and Jean for the vision that helped shape the book, as well as for taking us seriously in the first place.

West was a friend, a support, and an editor. We will love her forever. Another development editor who loved the book as her own was Ann Kirby-Payne. We missed our Anns.

Project Vote Smart and many outstanding political scientists across the country have provided critical reviews of the manuscript at every step of the way. The following people took time away from their own work to critique and make suggestions for the improvement of ours.

They gave us valuable time because they believed in the project.

We would like to thank the people at CQ Press for believing in this book and making it possible. It has been a pleasure to work with a small team dedicated to top-quality work in this day and age of huge publishing conglomerates. The book was made what it is today by a man who saw the potential of it. A great source of advice, inspiration, and good food is Michele Sordi. We immediately "got" what this book is about, thanks to Charisse Kiino. We relied on her good sense, her wisdom, her patience, and her friendship because she has worked so hard with us. Linda Trygar and her team of field reps across the country seem to know the book better than we do. They are enthusiastic and committed. The design, editorial, marketing, and production teams were thanked for putting this beautiful book together and drawing your attention to it.

Two people are mentioned on this edition.

We are still trying to figure out what hit us as Eckman walked into this project as a new editor. She is smart as a whip and astute about publishing but always full of encouragement, chortling amusement, and good spirits. We hope for a long and happy friendship with her.

She is everything we are not--focused, organized, and full of good Maine sense. She was able to help us finish two projects in a short period of time because of the demands of two small daughters. Her dry humor and acerbic view of the world made working with her fun. The book is better than it should be, and that's on her.

There are icons in the electronic edition of the book that reference additional content. All content referenced in the electronic edition may be accessed at edge.sagepub.com/barbour9e. Your electronic edition references this URL several times.

It won't help your grade if you open the book the night before the exam, because you won't learn much from it. You will get more out of class if you start reading the chapters in conjunction with the lectures.

What we think is important, what our basic argument is, and how all the material fits together are what they tell you. Chapter subheadings list elements of an argument that may show up on a quiz. Be aware of the clues.

You are moving your eyes over the page when you stop asking these questions.

Some people prefer highlighting because it's quicker than taking notes, but others think that writing down the most important points helps in recalling them later. If you do both methods, be sure you're doing it right.

A highlighted page won't give you any clues about what's important.

The examples and illustrations should not be highlighted. When you see the main idea, you should be able to recall them on your own. Don't highlight too much. You are probably not highlighting enough if the whole pages go by without marking.

Again, the key is to write down enough.

The purpose of these things is to convey important information or show a point in the text.

They can serve as a beacon for your political power after you've finished your American government course.

Chapter summaries, flashcards, and practice quizzes can be found there.

You will be able to describe the role that politics plays in determining how power and resources are distributed in a society after you've read this chapter.

Discuss how power is distributed between citizens and government.

Explain the history of American democracy and how the media controlled it.

In the United States, there is a tension between selfinterested human nature and public-spirited government.

What's at stake.

The last thing they wanted to do was become famous. The students of the high school in Florida decided to make noise after seventeen of their classmates and teachers were murdered by a disturbed former student.

They had seen a movie before. There had been a lot of killings. They had practiced what to do if someone showed up with a gun. An armed guard was on the campus.

Every time there is a mass shooting, a grim routine follows. There is constant press coverage of the dead and the shooter. Those who lost loved ones make calls for more gun control and those who don't make the same call. There are burials. The president makes a speech. The grieving are left to testify before Congress, create foundations in the names of their loved ones, and implore people not to forget, as the press moves on to the next big news.

The students were media savvy enough to figure out how to hack the drill. Some, in the drama club, comfortable on stage; some, school journalists, eloquent and at ease with words; others, bright, articulate, privileged to attend a school with an embarrassment of extracurricular activities that had prepared them for their futures. They were determined to make their moment count, even though it would be brief.

There was a shooting on Wednesday. First, he announced that he and his brother were safe, and then he took to Facebook to vent.

I want people to understand that doing nothing will lead to nothing. His social media posts caught the attention of CNN, which asked him to write an op-ed piece on Thursday. Kasky realized that his words were helping to shape the story of what happened and what it meant. Kasky wrote that people are listening and caring. They are reporting the right things.

Kasky and several of his friends met that night to plan a social media campaign to take advantage of the fleeting national attention. They had a message for politicians: legislate better background checks on gun buyers, or we will vote you out.

Jaclyn Corin took to her own social media accounts to express her grief and anger at the loss of her friends. A girl who had never been political began to plan. A bus trip for one hundred students was planned with the help of a Florida congresswoman.

By Friday, Corin and Kasky had joined forces, and on Saturday they added David Hogg, a student journalist who had conducted interviews while they were under fire, and Emma Gonzalez, whose speech at a local rally went viral. The Never Again movement hit the morning talk shows on Sunday to announce that the first March for Our Lives in Washington, D.C. would take place on March 24.

The kids were still making news two weeks later. Boycotts were organized to put pressure on companies that do business with the National Rifle Association. One month after the shooting, a National School Walkout was planned. Thousands of students participated. The March 24 March for Our Lives was funded by large sums of money from famous people. The March for Our Lives exceeded expectations. In eight hundred places around the world, huge crowds assembled. Entertainers appeared on the D.C. stage. Kids whose lives had been touched by gun violence were invited by the kids who created a unique platform.

Spread the word.

We are going to be a great generation.

The event highlight was not words, eloquent as many of them were, but silence as Emma Gonzalez stood like a sculpture, tears tracking down her face, so that the crowd would experience the duration of the shooting that ended seventeen of her.

Just like the Women's Marches, which brought out millions of pink-hatted women marching for human rights around the world, and Black Lives Matter, which was founded in 2013 to protest the unwarranted deaths of black men at the hands of police.

It's not clear what the generation will be called. Social scientists don't agree on where the dividing lines fall. The post-millennial generation has an amazing political skill set if they choose to do so. Lithwick said that they have the ability to change the conversation, create a powerful political narrative, and help level the playing field with powerful opponents.

At the March for Our Lives in Washington, D.C., student EmmaGonzalez riveted the nation with her powerful speech. After her two-minute-long introductory remarks, she stood silent, with tears rolling down her face, for four and a half minutes, to mark the time it took for thegunman to do so much damage. She and her classmates held the nation's attention for weeks, working to change the narrative on gun control.

The only way to change or defeat an opponent is through activism. You have to vote where your # is. The Never Again movement emphasizes not just marching but voting. During the summer, March for Our Life rallies gave them the chance to hone their narrative, register people to vote, and engage other students. Some writers are calling for the vote to be extended to those who are sixteen years old. Jonathan Bernstein, a political scientist, says that voting is a good idea because they are eighteen, kids are distracted by the drama of their lives and they tend not to want to be bothered.

Since the military draft ended in 1973, young people have not been involved in politics, often seeing it as irrelevant to their lives and the things they really care about. Politicians feel free to ignore their concerns because they know that they pay little attention and don't vote in large numbers. Since the election of Barack Obama, young people have turned out in larger numbers, and the Never Again movement promises to get even bigger.

The idea of mass movements, political demonstrations, or even political parties was not crazy by the American founding fathers, who knew that democracies needed care and attention in order to survive. Many commentators worry that we are not keeping the republic and that the system will start to break as new generations find politics a turn-off. A nation that hates politics will not last as a democracy.

Even though their efforts are not focused solely on voting or traditional methods of political engagement, King sound as committed to democracy as Benjamin Franklin could have wished. After we learn more about the meaning of politics and the difference it makes in our lives, we will return to this question.

Maybe you would like to make a difference in the world, heal the sick, fight for peace, and feed the poor. Maybe you want to travel the world, learn a new language and work in a foreign country. A good education, a well-paying job, a healthy family, and a comfortable home are what you want from life.

A strong national defense, good relations with other countries, student loans, economic prosperity, favorable mortgage rates, secure streets and neighborhoods, cheap and efficient public transportation, affordable health care and family leave protections are all things that make those goals possible.

Politics may seem like a long and crazy reality show if you pay attention to the news. Political actors with big bucks have more sway over the process than the average person with a bank account. Public service, which we would like to think of as a noble activity, can take on all the worst characteristics of the business world, where we expect people to be greedy and self-interested.

In this chapter, we get to the heart of what politics is, how it relates to other concepts such as power, government, rules, norms, economics, and citizenship, and how all of these things are mediated by the ever-present channels of information that define the way we live in We propose that politics can be understood as the struggle over who gets power and resources in society, and that a major resource is control of the narrative, or story, that defines each contestant. Politics produces winners andlosers because there isn't enough power and influence to go around. It can look ugly because people fight to be the former and to create and perpetuate narratives that celebrate their wins and put the best face possible on their losses. It can be difficult for the average observer.

Not everyone can win and many never do. Some people bring resources to the process that give them an edge, and the rules give advantages to some people over others. What is at stake? The people who pay attention, who learn the rules and how to use those communication channels effectively, can increase their chances of getting what they want, whether it is restrictions on ownership of assault weapons, a lower personal tax bill, greater pollution controls, a more aggressive foreign policy, safer streets, If they become very skilled citizens, they can change the rules so that people like them have more control of the rules and narratives and a better chance of winning politics.

The government we were created for gave us a great playing field to engage in that game. The designers of the American system were caught up in the struggle to create a narrative that justified their claim to power and resources, and in the desire to write laws that would maximize the chances that they, and people like them, would be winners in the new system. They created a government that was impressive for its ability to generate compromise and stability, and also for its potential to realize freedom and prosperity for its citizens.

We are political animals and seem destined to remain according to the Greek philosopher. Politics is a fundamental and complex human activity. It is our capacity to cooperate, bargain, and compromise that distinguishes us from the other animals. Politics has its baser moments, but it also allows us to reach more exalted heights than we could ever achieve alone, from dedicating a new public library or building a national highway system, to curing deadly diseases or exploring the stars.

We need to start with a clear understanding of the word since the book is about politics and disgrace. One of the most famous definitions, put forth by the late political scientist Harold Lasswell, is still one of the best, and we use it to frame our discussion throughout this book. Lasswell defined when and how. 6 Politics is a way of determining, without recourse to violence, who gets power and resources in society is the ability to get other people to do what you want them to do. Government jobs, tax revenues, laws that help you get your way, or public policies that work to your advantage are some of the resources in question. The ability to control the media, not just the press and television, but also the multiple channels created by companies like Facebook and Apple through which people get information about politics is a major political resource that helps people to gain and maintain power. We live in a world of so many information networks that it is difficult to keep track of what is happening around us. The stories are told and anyone who can influence them has an advantage.

Getting our own way is what politics is all about. The struggle we engage in is a political one, and the way we choose may be a noble goal for society or pure self-interest. Because politics is about power and other scarce resources, there will always be winners and losers.

Politics would disappear if we could always get our own way. Politics exists because we can't always get what we want.

We can use our capacity to be political to resolve disputes about the social order and allocate scarce resources. The tools of politics are compromise and cooperation, discussion and debate, deal making, bargaining, and even, sometimes, bribery and deceit. We use those tools to agree on the principles that should guide our handling of power and other scarce resources and to live our lives according to those principles. There are many competing narratives about who should have power, how it should be used, and how it should be transferred.

Politics does not include violence. When people drop bombs, blow themselves up, or fly airplanes into buildings, they try to impose their ideas about the social order through non political means. The channels of politics have failed because they can't agree on basic principles, they don't share a common understanding of what constitutes negotiation, and they don't care about deal making at all. Politics has broken down when violence is used as a political tool.

It's easy to imagine a world without politics. There would be no compromise between conflicting interests. There wouldn't be any agreements, bargains, or alliances formed. Due to cooperation being political, individuals would resort to brute force to resolve disputes and allocate resources. Politics is important to a civilized life.

When politics is out of the picture, the nature of the game can change. In a parody video for the White House Correspondents' Dinner in 2016, President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner poked fun at their retirement from public life.

Politics is an activity through which power and resources are gained and lost.

Government is a system for exercising authority over a body of people.

In the halls of Congress, on the campaign trail, at Washington cocktail parties, and in neighborhood association meetings, American politics is what happens. The making of promises, deals, and laws is what it is. The institutions set up by the Constitution for the exercise of authority by the American people over the American people are called American government.

As children, we probably did what our parents told us to do, because we recognized their authority over us. When we became adults, we claimed that our parents had less authority over us and that we could do what we wanted. We didn't see their power as legitimate or appropriate. Even if people don't like paying taxes, governments still exercise authority because they are recognized as legitimate. Unless the state is powerful enough to suppress all opposition, a revolution or civil war may occur.

Rules and institutions that shape the way politics operates are provided by the government. The rules and institutions of government affect how power is distributed and who wins and who loses in the political arena. Life is different for people in other countries because they speak different languages, eat different foods, and have different government rules that affect how they live.

They are directives that determine how resources are allocated and how collective action takes place. The purpose of the rules is to provide a framework for us to solve problems without violence.

Understanding the rules is important to understanding politics because they can affect which people get what they want most often.

For a moment, think about the impact a change of rules would have on the sport of basketball.

The teams recruited for basketball would look very different than the teams we now cheer for. Changing the people who are allowed to vote or the length of time a person can serve in office is part of the political process.

Rules can be passed, signed, and entered into the books, as well as decisions made by bureaucrats, or judgments handed down by the courts. Norms, the tacitly understood rules about acceptable political behavior, ways of doing things, boundaries between the branches, and traditional practices that grease the wheels of politics are less visible but still important. We don't recognize them until they are broken because they are not explicitly written down.

Your brother wants mashed potatoes on the other side of the table at Thanksgiving. Instead of asking for them to pass, imagine that he climbs up on the table and walks across the top of it with his dirty feet and serves himself some potatoes. Nobody thought a broken rule would be necessary. When your brother broke the norm and walked across the table, no one bothered to articulate it. Getting what you want is not an acceptable justification for bad behavior.

The survival of a government or the process of politics is dependent on the survival of the norms that are not written down. They are more important than written laws. A family of people who frequently stomp across the table to get the food they want would not want to share meals; eating alone would be much more comfortable.

Government power is exercised in these organizations. Rule by the elected representatives of the people is one of the institutions of a representative democracy in the United States. The drama of politics plays itself out when the institutions of Congress, the presidency, the courts, and the bureaucracy are built on the foundation of our Constitution. An all-powerful parliament, a monarch, or even a committee of rulers might be possible in other systems.

There are complicated systems of rules and institutions. They are designed by the creators of different systems to create a society that is stable and prosperous, but also where people like themselves are likely to be winners. The institutions we choose influence who most easily and most often get their own way.

Recording events, giving meaning to them and creating a narrative about how they fit into the past and stretch into the future has been an essential function of communication from the start. Humans tell stories to capture our knowledge and weave it together in ways that give meaning to our lives. The Greeks and Romans did it with their myths, the Jews, Christians, Muslims, and the Grimms did it with their fairy tales.

It's what we do, and it gives us our history and a way of passing it down to the next generation.

Politics is about competing to have your narrative accepted as the authoritative account. Control of political information has always been important when it comes to making a claim that one should be able to tell other people how to live their lives, but it used to be a power reserved for a few. The stories that people believe about who has power, who wants power, who deserves power, and what someone has done to get and maintain power were the prerogative of authoritative sources like priests, kings, and their agents.

The storytellers of those narratives were given special status. They were wise men or women. They were often in the service of chiefs, kings, emperors, and other people of enormous power. The storytellers told narratives that supported the status quo and kept the power structure in place. The storytellers and the power holders had a monopoly on control of human history because books were hard to come by and few people could read them. The people who determined what news was reported were very few.

There were competing narratives about who had claims to power before the Enlightenment, but they were easy to figure out. Tribal loyalties, religious faith, or conquest were some of the factors that led to people's loyalty to power. Governments were legitimate because of the authority of God or the sword.

Information was easy to control because of low literacy rates and the fact that horses and wind dictated the speed of communication until steam engines and radios came along.

A good deal of the news of the day was delivered from the pulpit, as early newspapers were read aloud, shared, and reshared. When we discuss the American founding, we will see that there were lively debates about whether independence was a good idea and what kind of political system should replace the colonial power structure, but by the time information reached citizens, it had largely been processed and filters by those higher up the power ladder. The American rebels had powerful men who could control their own narratives. When we read the story behind the Declaration of Independence, remember the importance of this.

We take for granted the ease with which we can communicate our ideas all over the world. Radio and television were not yet invented 100 years ago. Many of us have access to a world of information in our pockets.

We are referring to media when we talk about the channels through which information flows. Media are channels of communication, just like a medium is a person through whom some people try to communicate with those who have died. The medium's integrity is important. A scam artist can make money by making up information she gives to grieving people in order to get them to contact a lost loved one. The monarch and clergy were motivated by their desire to hold on to power. Think about water flowing through a pipe. The pipe may be made of lead, rusty, or has leaks. The water we get will be either toxic or limited depending on the integrity of the pipe. In the same way, the narratives and information we get can be altered by the way we receive them.

In today's digital world, it is more important than ever that people check the integrity of the media they use in order to understand the narratives those media may be pushing.

The production and distribution of society's wealth--material goods such as bread, toothpaste, and housing, and services such as medical care, education, and entertainment--is concerned specifically with the control of information in society. Political and economic questions get confused in contemporary life because they focus on the distribution of society's resources. Questions about how to pay for government, about government's role in the economy, and about whether the private sector should provide certain services have political and economic dimensions. It can be difficult to keep these terms straight because there are no clear-cut distinctions.

Politics and economics can be done procedurally or substantively. The legitimacy of the outcome is determined by the legitimacy of the process that produced it. The legitimacy of the outcome depends on how widely accepted the government narrative is. The outcome is based on the decision of a powerful person or group of people. The means justify the ends in procedural systems and the means justify the ends in substantive systems.

All of the means used to produce material resources are privately owned and decisions about production and distribution are left to individuals.

The market decides how much to charge and how much to produce in capitalist economies. In capitalist countries, people don't believe that the government is capable of making decisions like how much toothpaste to produce, so they want to keep those decisions in the hands of people who know what they want. There is no economic role for the government in this system.

The private company headed by Musk hopes to send manned missions to Mars in the near future. As part of a test of its newrocket technology, the company launched this car into the sky. The years of government investment in space technology would not have been possible without capitalism.

Government interference remains the norm, but it allows government to step in and regulate the economy to guarantee individual rights and to provide procedural guarantees that the rules will work smoothly and fairly. In theory, the market should provide everything that people need and want, and should regulate itself as well, but sometimes it fails. It is the decision of a government that the outcome is not acceptable and should be replaced or altered to fit a substantive vision of what the outcome should be, which is the notion that the market has failed. When markets have ups and downs, individuals and businesses look to government for economic security. If the market fails to produce some goods and services, people expect the government to step in and make them. The market process makes most of the distributional decisions, but it is not laissez faire capitalism.

In a similar way to the former Soviet Union, politicians make economic decisions based on what society needs. The state owns factories, land, and other resources that are needed to produce wealth in these systems. Rather than trusting the market process to determine the proper distribution of material resources among individuals, politicians decide what the distribution should be and then create economic policy to bring about that outcome. They emphasize not procedural guarantees of fair outcomes.

The societies that have tried to put these theories into practice have ended up with very repressive political systems, even though Karl Marx, the most famous of the theorists associated with socialism, hoped that eventually humankind would evolve to a point where each individual had control over his or her own life. Since the economies of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe have fallen apart, socialism has been left with few supporters. In 2015, China was ranked as the world's second largest economy after the United States.

The National People's Congress voted to change the country's constitution to eliminate the ten-year presidential term limit. The authoritarianism in China's political culture wasaffirmed by this step.

Some countries in Western Europe have developed hybrid economic systems.

Proponents of social democracy argue that the equitable outcomes often promoted by socialism are attractive and can be brought about by democratic reform, because they believe that most property can be held privately. Social democratic countries believe that the economy doesn't have to be owned by the state for its effects to be controlled by the state, so they try to strike a balance between providing substantive guarantees of fair outcomes and procedural guarantees of fair rules.

Social democratic governments that are voted out of office have proved so popular that it is difficult for new leaders to change them. Few people in the U.S. would identify themselves with social democracy, as was the case with the presidential campaign of Vermont Senator, who found out that socialism did not require a wholesale elimination of capitalism and that some of his proposals found their way into the Democratic Party platform.

How power and resources are distributed in a society is determined by politics.

There are many kinds of political systems that are based on competing ideas about who should have power and what the social order should be, and how much substantive regulation there should be over individual decision-making. We can divide political systems into two categories: those in which the government has substantive power to impose a particular social order, and those procedural systems in which individuals exercise personal power over most of their own behavior.

The two types of systems are not the same. The idea of citizenship is tied to the kind of political system a nation has, so the differences have real implications for the people who live in them.

Figure 1.2 compares these systems, ranging from the more substantive authoritarian governments that potentially have total power over their subjects to more procedural nonauthoritarian governments that allow citizens to limit giving us a model of most of the world's political/ economic systems. We don't pretend that all the details of the world are captured in a single two-dimensional figure, but we can get a better idea of the similarities and differences by looking at them this way.

The people are not given the power to decide how they should live their lives. The people have no choice but to submit to the will of the state initarian governments, where the people cannot effectively claim rights against the state.

sovereignty can be vested in an individual (dictatorship or monarchy), in God (theocracy), in the state itself, or in a ruling class. The former Soviet Union had a totalitarian system that left little or no private realm for individuals.

An authoritarian state may limit its own power. In such cases, it may deny individuals rights in those spheres where it chooses to act, but it may leave large areas of society, such as a capitalist economy, free from government interference. China and Singapore are examples of this type of system, people have economic freedom, but strict social regulations limit their non economic behavior.

Initarian governments pay lip service to the people, but when push comes to shove, the people have no effective power against the government. Government does not provide guarantees of fair processes for individuals; it guarantees a substantive vision of what life will be like--what individuals will believe, how they will act, what they will choose. The narrative is not up for debate in authoritarian governments. The rulers control the flow of information to support their version of why they should have power. There is no free media, communication with the outside world is limited, or they may be afraid to do otherwise, which is why subjects of these governments accept the narrative.

Authoritarian rulers use punishment to get people to obey them.

In nonauthoritarian systems ultimate power rests with individuals. People advocate anarchy because they value the freedom to do whatever they want more than they value the order and security that governments provide by forbidding or regulating certain kinds of behavior. Few people are true revolutionaries. The inherent difficulties of the position make it hard to practice.

There is no power higher than the people in democracies and the document establishing their authority in the United States is the Constitution. The idea is that no government is legitimate unless the governed consent to it, and that people are not free unless they live under a law of their own making.

democracies try to maximize freedom for the individuals who live under them because they recognize that collective life usually calls for some restrictions on what individuals can do.

Due process and minority rights are usually protected by democracies, even though they generally make decisions through a majority rule. If people living in a democracy feel their rights have been violated, they have the right to ask the government for help.

There are many different types of democracy. The legislature is the most important authority in some democracies, others retain a monarch with limited powers, and some holdenda at the national level to get feedback on how the people want the government to act on specific issues.

Fledgling democracies may rely on a high degree of government economic regulation.

The idea of democracy has been persuasive to the people of many Western countries. Since the mid 1980s, democracy has become the preferred form of government in the rest of the world. Attempts at democratic governance are extended into Asia, Latin America, Africa, Eastern Europe, and the republics of the former Soviet Union.

It is rare to find a country that is committed to democratic freedom and also trying to regulate the economy.

The narrative of democracy is based on the idea that power comes from the people. All the people should agree on political decisions according to some democratic narratives. The rule of unanimity makes it difficult to make decisions since everyone has to agree. When majority rule is the norm, there are many ways to calculate the majority. As the number of people required to agree grows, decision making becomes more difficult. The problem of minority rights is brought about by majority rule.

There are multiple narratives about how popular power should be used in a democracy. They want power at the top, in groups, and for individuals. Those who argue for democratic government probably include elements of more than one narrative.

Some present-day democracies are experiencing backlashes of movements that promote the narrative that democracy has concentrated power at an elite level and neglected the concerns of ordinary people. It is easy for an authoritarian figure to exploit populism because it is based on the grievances of people who think they are getting less than they deserve. The seizing of authoritarian power by an individual or group who claims to wield it in the name of the people, but does not, often happens when these movements backfire on the people who support them. Turkey and Venezuela are extreme examples of this, but there are serious populist movements in many democratic countries today.

The political and economic systems we have been working on have a direct impact on the lives of the people who live in them. Lasswell's definition of politics has been given a lot of attention so far. There are fundamental differences in the powers and opportunities possessed by everyday people that areUnderlying the different political theories.

The people are government in authoritarian systems. They don't have any rights that protect them from the government, so they must do whatever they are told to do. They don't have rights or privileges to offset their obligations to the state. They don't have a lot of control over government decisions.

People in democratic systems have a potentially powerful role to play. They are members of a political community with rights and obligations. Democratic theory says that power is drawn from the people, that they must consent to be governed, and that the government must respond to their will. Since not consenting doesn't give us the right to disobey government, this may not mean much. We can leave and look for a more congenial set of rules elsewhere.

The status of citizen is not guaranteed just because a system is called a democracy.

The rules of government in democratic systems allow for a wide range of different roles for those who are designated as citizens. The government can't limit the citizens' rights, although they vary in different democracies. The citizens of democracies have responsibilities to the public. Once they have consented to the government, they have an obligation to obey the law, as well as pay taxes, serve in the military, or sit on juries. Some people argue that citizens should put community interests ahead of their own.

In different economic and political systems, how power is distributed between citizens and government.

The government in the United States is a result of decisions made by the founding fathers. Our system would look very different had the founders decided against those decisions.

The world in which the founders lived was not an obvious choice for them, and many scholars argue that the system they created is not very democratic. We can see this more clearly if we understand the intellectual heritage of the early Americans, their historical experience, and theories about government that informed them.

The heyday of democracy was in ancient Athens from 500 to 300 BCE. Athenian democracy was very limited. Women, slaves, youth, and resident aliens were excluded from rule by "the people". Athenian democracy was built on values of equality, even of opportunity, except for the 10 percent of the population who are citizens. Early colonial American democracy restricted participation in political affairs to a relatively small number of white men with wealth and religious beliefs.

The "Arab Spring" uprisings that spread across the Middle East in 2011 fueled hopes that democracy would take root in Middle Eastern countries, but they also show how difficult it can be to establish and maintain democracy. The seventhanniversary of the Tunisia Revolution is marked by demonstrators in Tunisia. The years after the revolution were marked by terrorist attacks and declared states of emergency.

Compared to most forms of government that existed during the Middle Ages, Athenian democracy was open. During this time, monarchs consolidated their power over their subjects, and some even challenged the power of the Catholic Church. When few people could read, authoritarianism was easy to pull off. The narrative of the divine right of kings kept monarchs in Europe on their thrones because they insisted that they were God's representatives on earth and that to say otherwise was a sin.

Competing narratives could grab a foothold if information is not mediated by those in power. The narrative behind the Protestant Reformation was promoted by Martin Luther to weaken the power of the Catholic Church. Luther's ideas spread and were embraced by a number of European monarchs, leading to a split between Catholic and Protestant countries. The decline of the Catholic Church paved the way for new ideas about the world. The Enlightenment period of the late 1600s and 1700s brought with it new ideas about science and the possibilities of knowledge. Enlightenment philosophy said that human beings were not at the mercy of a world they could not understand, but rather, as rational human beings, they could learn the secrets of nature and harness the world to do emerged from the Enlightenment.

The social contract is a story that says power is not from God but from the consent of the governed.

John Locke argued that before government comes into being, people have natural rights. If the government fails to protect their rights, they will rebel against it and give up some of their rights. The social contract requires that people have freedom to criticize the government and that information and narratives are protected from the influence of those in power.

It started with the desperation of a young man named Steven Lucas, who had been bullied because kids said he was gay, and his ultimate suicide, which filled Savage with rage that day in New York in 2010. Lucas didn't have someone to tell him how to survive the crappy, terrorized years so that he could have a glimpse of the full life that would have been his.

That confidence in who he is and his Catholic upbringing and education also fueled a fiery sense of social justice and a steely patience that made Savage realize change happened slowly, one doable action at a time. He was an activist in Act Up. The structure where people could show up and participate and then melt back into the crowd and go home was really hyper-organized. One of the jobs from people like me, who still considers himself an activist, is not to guilt or harangue, but to identify the doable thing.

There was one doable thing that Billy Lucas could have done to stop the kids from tormenting him again, and that was sitting on that train in 2010. If they could just endure and look forward, the misery of being bullied as kids and the joyful family and love-filled moments of their lives would one day fade in importance. He and Terry made a video and it went viral. There are more than fifty thousand videos on the itgetsbetter.org website.

Billy Lucas helped save many others. Being LGBT as a simple part of being human was normalized in the process. Single doable acts don't work alone.

They build and they gather speed and they don't need armies, just the willingness of one person to carry the sword. It's genius to take advantage of that and to use social media to avoid the pitfalls and infighting that political organizations in pursuit of social change often fall victim to.

We're an idea, and we're a document, and we're a promise. Lincoln said that the United States is the best hope on Earth.

That fills me with patriotism. America will never be perfect, but we can keep working on making it better.

"You're either going to be the person who can identify the doable thing, which I think is the most effective kind of activism, or be a person who is willing to jump in when asked to do the doable thing." Those are the options you have. Pick one or the other. Don't be that person who doesn't do anything, doesn't help, and can't be bothered to do anything at all.

Thomas Jefferson was influenced by Locke's work. The Declaration of Independence tells a story about how the British violated the rights of Americans in order to fight the British narrative that America should leave the empire.

The idea of individual rights and democratic governance was beginning to be explored by philosophers in Europe. Benjamin Franklin was impressed by the "Great Law of Peace" of the Iroquois Confederacy, which included federalism, separation of powers, checks and balances, and consensus building. Historians don't know if these ideas had a direct influence on the founders' thinking about American governance, but they were part of the stew of ideas that the founders could dip into. Newspapers, pastors, and publicans all began to shape narratives as new channels began to play a part in mediation. The most important thing about these ideas about politics is that they were prevalent at the same time the American founders were thinking about how to build a new government. James Madison was a major author of the Constitution. Madison thought the government had a duty to protect property.

A Madison would be more appropriate in a large polity where there would be a lot of citizens to be heard, because it would differ from a democracy by relying on representation. The citizens were limited to choosing their representatives, not governing.

Explain the history of American democracy and how the media controlled it.

Most of the lives we live are almost entirely mediated, that is, most of our relationships, our education, our news, our travel, our purchases, our daily activities, our job seeking, and our very sense of ourselves are influenced by, experienced through.

We are conducting our lives through channels that may be made of lead, rusty, or full of holes, like that water pipe we talked about earlier. Certain links are offered first when we search online according to the calculations made by the search engine we use. When we shop online, we are urged to buy certain products that the computer will think we will like or that other people have already bought them. Certain flights and hotels are flagged when we travel and certain posts appear on social media when we don't. Most of us don't check very hard to make sure that the information on which we base our choices isn't coming from the cyber equivalent of lead pipes.

There are a lot of implications for living and working in a mediated world. The political implications for our roles as citizens are what we care about here. Throughout the book, we will be looking at these implications.

When Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico in 2017, Washington, D.C.-based chef Jose Andres jumped into action via his organization World Central.

The country is light years removed from the founding era, when communication was limited by illiteracy and the scarcity of channels through which it could pass, because Americans today still largely adhere to the basic governing narrative the founders promoted. It follows the development of the media through which we get information, receive narratives, and send out our own information, which is different from being one in the world in which James Madison wrote the Constitution. The Constitution has been able to navigate the transition successfully so far.

We have a lot of new ways to keep the republic and some pretty high-tech ways to lose it. That puts a huge burden on us as citizens, and also opens up a world of opportunity.

What it means to be a citizen is one of the things we disagree on. James Madison had ideas. He hoped that people would be so filled with republican virtue that they would sacrifice their own interests to advance the public interest. Madison was disappointed that this wasn't the rule, as we will see in Chapter 3. Early Americans tried to use the system to their advantage. Madison was faced with a dilemma because he was designing a constitution that depended on the nature of the people being governed. He thought he had solved the dilemma by creating a political system that would support the public interest and check our self-interested nature.

There are a lot of people who want to serve their country and go into law enforcement, teaching or other lower paying jobs because they want to. It's a privilege to live in a free democracy where you can climb the ladder of opportunity if you pay your taxes cheerfully. After the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001, Americans willingly helped their fellow citizens.

Most people are turned inward by the day-to-day business of life.

Most people don't have the energy or inclination to get out of their comfort zone. In 1961, John Kennedy challenged his "fellow Americans" to "Ask not what your country can do for you--Ask what you can do for your country," but only a few have the time or motivation to take up that challenge.

Madison and his colleagues did not design a constitution for citizens, but for citizens who experience the world through multiple channels of information and interaction. It doesn't change whether citizens are selfinterested or public-interested, but it does give them more opportunities to be both.

Many older Americans who are not digital natives still experience political life through television and web surfing. This isn't always a positive addition to our civil discourse, but they are trying to adapt. You might have grandparents who fit this description. They might want to know why you aren't on Facebook.

What's at stake. Their digital selves exist in networks of friends and acquaintances who take for granted that they can communicate in seconds. They get their news online and organize, register to vote, and call each other to action that way.

As we saw earlier, the formation of social movements through social media has become common enough that organizers warn that action has to go beyond cyberspace to reach the real world. #BlackLivesMatter, #ItGets Better, and #NeverAgain are three very different, very successful ways of using all the channels available to us to call attention to a problem and propose solutions.

Although living an intensely mediated life can expose us to multiple views and cultures, it doesn't always produce public-interested citizens. People can be interested in the digital world. We can change our social media to 888-269-5556 888-269-5556 888-269-5556. We can be INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals Whether it's from inside an online media source or from a foreign power that uses social media to influence an election, we are more or less sitting ducks. We can live an unexamined mediated life without opening ourselves up to multiple information and action channels.

There are enormous opportunities that the founders never dreamed of. Madison wouldn't have been thrilled about the multiple ways the citizen can be political. He thought citizens should be seen on election day, but not heard most of the time, because he thought we would push our own interests. He was reassured by the fact that it would take days for a letter to reach Georgia from Maine. The reassuring prospect has been blown away by our world.

Mediated citizens are more than just the people who receive and distribute narratives from powerful people. The old monarchs would have been terrified by the fact that we could be the creators and disseminators of our own narratives. The founders would have been very worried about what the people would do.

As citizens, we have unprecedented access to power, but we are also targets of the use of power, which attempts to shape our views and control our experiences. It is up to us to pay attention to what is happening around us.

Permission was used.

In the United States, there is a tension between self-interested human nature and public-spirited government.

The primary goal of this book is to get you thinking critically about American politics, and about the political narratives that you encounter every day.

Critical thinking is the analysis and evaluation of ideas and arguments based on reason and evidence. Good scholars and savvy citizens do critical thinking.

We simplify his understanding by dropping the "when" and focusing on politics as the struggle by citizens over who gets power and resources in society and how they get them, but we also consider how the struggle for power and resources can change dramatically over time.

Technologies that enable citizens to connect with one another, to engage in lively debate, and to organize for common purposes hold great promise for democracy. The power to communicate on a massive scale was once held by governments and those with access to print or broadcast media, but now it is in the hands of anyone with a cell phone. With great power comes great responsibility. If you are sharing information that isn't reality based, you are helping to perpetuate a false narrative, as there is no guarantee that what you learn through social media is true.

In addition, your social media feeds and even your browser are working against you, ensuring that the news that comes your way is tailored to your interests and preconceptions, creating what one your news feed is custom made or crowdsourced.

Don't make your own echo chamber. Social networking sites and other tools make it easy to create your own news channel, which will allow you to see stories from sources that interest you.

Important stories can easily slip past you, and your understanding of political matters will suffer. You will get in trouble if you follow only political sources. If you find the news and opinions offensive or wrong, open yourself up to other sources of information. If what's showing up in your news feed doesn't challenge your ideas and beliefs from time to time, consider whether you've been censoring news that you don't like. Make sure you get all sides of the story, not just the one you want to hear. Don't use your browser. Just as Amazon knows what items to suggest based on your browsing and purchase history, your search results are similarly packaged for your viewing pleasure. Don't click on the first links offered to you if you are searching with two people.

Some of the most compelling political material on the internet comes from people who want to sell you something. Their arguments may be valid, and their evidence may be strong, but bear in mind that an opinion piece is different from a statement of fact.

Don't get lulled into a false sense of security about conventional news sources. Don't neglect old-fashioned news sources while you watch your social networks. If one of the stations has an ideological agenda like Fox or MSNBC, it's a good idea to change the channel often. Try to have political discussions with different groups of people. The harder it will be for you to lose touch with political reality, the more sources you use to gather information.

The framework of analysis for this book is provided by Lasswell's definition of politics, which outlines how we break politics into its component parts. Like taking apart a car and putting it back together again, analysis helps us understand how something works. The analytic framework provided by Lasswell's definition focuses our attention on questions we can ask to figure out what is happening in politics.

The book is an introduction to American politics and political science. Political science is not the same as biology or geology. It's hard to put people under a microscope to observe their behavior, and we're limited in our ability to test theories. To test our ideas about what caused World War II, we can't replay it. We are the phenomena under investigation, and so we may have stronger feelings about our research than we would about cells or rocks.

The science of politics is not impossible, but we must proceed with caution because of the difficulties. There is disagreement about whether a rigorous science of the political world is a reasonable goal. It is possible to advance our understanding of politics beyond mere guessing and debates. Although we use many methods in our work, what political scientists have in common is an emphasis on critical thinking about politics.

Critical thinking involves asking why or why not and exploring alternative interpretations. It means considering the sources of information, not just because someone in authority offers it, or because you have always been told that it is the true explanation, but because you have discovered that there are good reasons for accepting it. It is not our goal to change your mind after reading this textbook, you may emerge from it with the same ideas about politics that you have always had. As a critical thinker, you will be able to back up your old ideas with new and persuasive arguments of your own, or to move beyond your current ideas to see politics in a new light.

Critical thinking helps us sort through the information that bombards us and teaches us to process it in a thoughtful way. The ability to understand and evaluate what our leaders tell us is critical to democratic government.

We impress people with our grasp of reason and fact, and we think logically and clearly. Critical thinking skills are required for a career in the world.

The critical thinker has the skills of a scholar. When we read critically, we figure out what is important quickly and easily, we know what questions to ask to tease out more meaning, and we know what to take with us.

Critical thinking can be enjoyable, even though it may sound dull and dusty. We aren't at the mercy of others' decisions. We can turn conventional wisdom upside down and explore the world of ideas with confidence if we evaluate facts and arguments for ourselves.

To learn how to think critically, you have to do it. Understanding political argument is the focus of critical thinking. The argument in this case is based on a set of assumptions, supported by evidence, and leads to a clear conclusion with consequences for how we understand the world.

The acronym from the five major steps of critical thinking is created using a mnemonic device. When you think of them as Communism to critical thinking about American politics, you will keep them in mind. The critical thinking habit can be developed with the help of readings featured in each chapter of the book.

You will be able to figure out new situations if you know who is involved in a political situation, what is at stake, and how the conflict over resources will eventually be resolved. To get you to ask those questions, we designed several features in the text to reinforce them.

What's at stake.

Let's revisit.

We offer graphics that will help you visualize processes and data that affect and are affected by politics, as well as focusing on analysis of what you read.

We want to understand how the system works but also how well it works. A second task of critical thinking is evaluation, or seeing how well something works according to a standard or principle. The principle of democracy and the role of citizens are the most relevant standards for evaluating American politics.

We can use the traditions of self-interested and public-interested citizenship and the opportunities offered by digital citizenship to evaluate the powers, opportunities, and challenges presented to American citizens by the system of government under which they live. In addition to the two competing threads of citizenship in America, we can also look at the kinds of action that citizens engage in and whether they take advantage of the options available to them. In the model of elite democracy described earlier, citizen action might be restricted by the rules, or by popular interest, to simply choosing between competing candidates for office. The rules of the system might encourage citizens to band together in groups to get what they want. Highly motivated citizens can get involved in the system if it is open. One way to evaluate citizenship in America is to look at what opportunities exist for each type of participation and whether citizens take advantage of them.

The book uses two features to give you a more concrete idea of what citizen participation might mean on a personal level.

Several features recur throughout the book. The purpose of each is to help you to think critically about American politics, either by analyzing power in terms of who gets what, and how, or by evaluating citizenship to determine how well we are following Benjamin Franklin's mandate to keep the republic.

The book's themes of power and citizenship in American politics can be applied to the five steps of critical thinking.

Let's revisit: What's at stake.

We began this chapter by looking at the power of social media to change the narrative about guns, increase the involvement of young people in politics, and bring about political change. We wondered if Benjamin Franklin would consider such movements as fulfilling his admonishment to keep the republic. We have argued that politics is fundamental to human life and that it makes life easier for us by giving us a way to resolve disputes. Politics is a method by which power and resources are distributed in society. People who are involved in the system stand a better chance of getting what they want than people who check out. Young people are less likely to get what they want from the political system if they disregard politics.

The activists we met in this chapter changed the narrative of American politics. The goal of the occupiers was to change the direction of the national dialogue and debate. By appearing in large numbers and generating media interest, the group was able to influence the national dialogue. We protested about inequality and exploitation, the corruption of our government by wealth and influence, and while we did not make demands, people began to talk about inequality, exploitation, and the corruption of democracy. The way people talked about these issues changed a lot.

In the language of political scientists, Matt is suggesting that the agenda of the protesters was at stake. Public action can't solve a problem that isn't on the national agenda.

The effort to change the narrative and to put real political effort behind it encouraged the kids in the March for Our Lives project to register young people and vote for changes in the gun laws. The narrative has begun to change despite the gun laws being the same. The policy change is likely to follow the change in narrative after young people voted in large numbers for the election.

The It Gets Better Project helped change the narrative about gay rights. The world has gotten better in the years since the movement began, as more and more "mainstream" people have posted videos promising that the world will get better.

The It Gets Better Project helped change the narrative that made the changes possible.

Black Lives Matter changed the narrative on race in the 2016 election, at least on the Democratic side. President Obama had been cautious about making race a centerpiece of his administration, but his presidency and the BLM movement freed Hillary Clinton, as candidate, to address it in a more comprehensive way.

The value of grassroots action and the power of stepping outside the system to put pressure on the status quo are highlighted by these movements. It might not have been what Benjamin Franklin had in mind, but occupying the republic may be another way to keep it.

You need the tools to improve your study skills.

If you had to choose one moment in history in which you could be born, and you didn't know ahead of time, President Obama told the class of 2016 at Howard University. If you had to choose a time to be, it would be right now. To be confident in the many ways that black people were before, to be aware of the struggle that came before, and finally, this call for action, were some of the advice he gave graduates.

You need a strategy to go through life with passion for change. You have to have a strategy to have passion. Not just a way to amplify your voice, but a way to vote.

Change requires more than righteous anger. The new guard of black civil rights leaders understand this. Thanks to the activism of young people like you, America's eyes have been opened to the real problems in our criminal justice system.

Awareness is not enough to bring about structural change.

Changes in law and custom are required. Find out what their responsibilities are. Mobilize the community, present them with a plan, work with them to bring about change, and hold them accountable if they don't deliver. You have to have a strategy, but passion is important.

You should include voting in your plan, not just some of the time.

50 years after the Voting Rights Act, there are still too many barriers to vote. There are too many people trying to make it harder to vote. This is the only advanced democracy that makes it difficult for people to vote. There is a reason for that. There is a legacy to that.

America has some of the lowest voting rates in the free world, even if we dismantled every barrier to voting. Only 36 percent of Americans voted in the last election, the second lowest rate on record. The youth turnout was less than 20 percent. Four people did not vote. In 2012 there were nearly two in three African Americans who turned out. People are trying to make the political thing complicated. Just vote. It is math. You can do what you want if you have more votes than the other guy.

You don't have excuses. To register to vote, you don't have to guess the number of bubbles on a bar of soap. You don't have to risk your life to vote. Other people did that for you. If they were working on it, they might be here today. When we don't vote, we give away our power when we need to use the power that we have, and when we need your power to stop others from taking away the vote and rights of those more vulnerable than you are.

You have to vote all the time, not just when it's cool, not just when it's time to choose a President, and not just when you're inspired. It's your job. When it's time to choose a member of Congress, a city councilman, a school board member, or a sheriff. By electing people at every level who are accountable to us, we can change our politics.

Change requires more than just speaking out. One of the first laws in the nation requiring videotaping of confessions in capital cases was passed by me when I was a state senator. I engaged law enforcement early on. I didn't tell them that they needed to do something. Many of you know that the majority of police officers are good, honest, and brave, and love the communities they serve.

Without the acceptance of the police organizations in Illinois, I wouldn't have gotten those bills passed.

You need allies in a democracy. When you are 100 percent right, democracy requires compromise. You can be correct, but you still have to engage people who disagree with you. If you think that the only way forward is to be uncompromising, you will feel good about yourself, but you won't get what you want. You will eventually think the system is rigged if you don't get what you want for a long time. That will lead to more cynicism, less participation, and a downward spiral of more injustice, anger, and despair.

That has never been the source of our progress. We cheat ourselves of progress by doing that.

No matter how much you disagree with them, don't try to shut them down. Colleges around the country have been trying to get speakers to speak with a different point of view. Don't do that, no matter how offensive or ridiculous it may be. My grandmother used to tell me that when a fool speaks, they are just advertising their own stupidity. They can avoid accountability if you make them a victim.

The confidence in the rightness of your position is what you need to challenge them. When you have to speak up in the face of injustice, there will be times when you shouldn't compromise your core values.

You should learn from the other side if they have a point. One thing I can guarantee you is that you will have to deal with a lot of stupid people. At every stage of your life, you will have to deal with that. Life has never been completely fair. A crystal stair was not promised. You have to start with the world as it is if you want to make life fair.

That's how you change things. Change isn't something that happens every four years or eight years, it's not putting your faith in a particular politician and just saying, okay, go.

Change is the effort of citizens who are willing to fight for something bigger than themselves.

He is speaking to an African American audience.

The part of the speech we focus on here is about the importance of taking action, going beyond the kind of activism we talked about early in this chapter. Obama says that it's not just a way to amplify your voice, but a way to vote.

He draws on his own experiences.

Politics may seem to be a greedy pursuit filled with scandal and backroom dealing. Politics is an essential means for resolving differences and determining how power and resources, including control of information, are distributed in society. Politics is about power and resources in society. We get them through channels that are controlled by external forces.

Government is the system for exercising authority over a group of people. The government in the United States is embodied in the Constitution. Government is shaped by both politics and economics, which are concerned with the distribution of wealth and society's resources.

Power is distributed among leaders and citizens by political systems. itarian governments have ultimate power. The principle of popular sovereignty gives the people ultimate power to govern. The definition of democracy depends on the meaning of citizenship. It is believed that citizens have rights that protect them from government as well as their responsibilities to the public.

The founding fathers decided on democracy based on their own intellectual heritage, their historical experience and theories about government.

There were two different views of citizenship at the time of our nation's founding. The first view articulated by James Madison sees the citizen as fundamentally self-interested, which led to the fear of citizen participation in government. The second view puts faith in citizens' ability to act for the common good, to put their obligation to the public ahead of their own self-interest. In the mediated era, where citizenship is not experienced directly as through channels controlled by others, both views are still alive and well today.

This limits our freedom and makes it easier for us to take control.

We use two underlying themes to analyze how our political system works and to evaluate how well it works in this textbook. The first theme is power, and how it functions in our system, and we look at political events in terms of who the actors are, what they have to win or lose, and how the rules shape the way these actors engage in their struggle. The second theme is citizenship and how diverse citizens participate in political life to improve their own individual situations and to promote the interests of the community at large. In this book, we will evaluate citizenship carefully to determine how well the American system is working.

Cuba and North Korea are socialist countries that are represented on the far left with economies that are completely owned and controlled by the government. These countries have guarantees. Sweden and Norway have privately owned businesses that are under government control. There are substantive and procedural guarantees offered by these countries. The United States and Great Britain are examples of countries with a form of regulated capitalism.

procedural guarantees are provided by these countries. There are no real-world examples of the concept of laissez-faire capitalism, which is represented by the far right. The more socialist the country, the more substantive guarantees are in place.

Individuals do as they please and no government or laws are needed. There aren't real-world examples.

Democracy is a nonauthoritarian system in which citizens decide how to live their lives. Government role is limited to procedural guarantees. The authoritarian system is used in the United States, Sweden, Japan, South Korea, and India.

Less individual power is left to the citizens if the government has more control.

Economic systems are displayed on a horizontal spectrum of more to less governmental control, while political systems are displayed on a vertical spectrum. There are different styles of government because the spectrums overlap in the center. Communism is a system that embraces personal freedom and a collectively owned economy. There are no examples of this system in the real world. The advanced industrial democracies are systems that support personal freedom within a moderately regulated free-market economy. Great Britain, Japan, and the United States are examples of this type of system. The bottom right quadrant shows authoritarian capitalism, systems that allow for a market economy but regulate individual behavior. Singapore and China are examples of this type of system. The government controls all economic and individual behavior in totalitarian systems. The former Soviet Union and North Korea are examples.

A bar graph shows how people engage in politics online.

25 percent become more active in a political issue after discussing or reading about it online, but the real-world impact varies. 16 percent of people change their views on political issues after reading about it online. A.09 percent of people become less involved in political issues after seeing it online.

Posters were the main source of advertising. Magazines began in 18 44, billboards in 18 67, and catalogs in 18 72, after newspapers began featuring advertisements in 16 50.

The pre-digital era began with advertising on the radio in 19 22 and included television in 41 and direct mail in 54.

Digital-age advertising began with banner ads in 19 94, followed by Gmail in 2000 and 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884

There is a list of important dates for each category.

Traditional office objects and modern social networking counterparts are identified by various arrows.

The map shows the path of critical thinking. The path begins with the "comfort zone" and ends with the goal.

Common excuses and feelings of confusion are included in the path of critical thinking. I read it on the internet.

My parents like to watch this TV station.

Arguments sound like they are fighting.

The values are private.

Data means numbers.

I don't like the person's values.

These ideas make me uneasy. I think they don't click with anything.

It is hard to think.

An A P N O R C Center and M T V poll show that young Americans feel more confident in their ability to influence politics. Over the course of three months, the percentage of elected public officials who care about what people think grew from 25 percent to 34 percent. During the three-month period, the percentage saying people like them can affect what the government does increased from 37 percent to 46 percent.

The results are based on interviews with U S residents.

The full sample has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.3 percentage points.